“In retrospect we have to ask why this mass illusion, the transition to “a new ecological society” imploded and fell off the teleprompters, off the front pages, and out of the seemingly endless TV special reports on threatened polar bears and collapsing ice cliffs. How could this all disappear so fast?”

A provocative piece and, if you lot can emerge from your comfort bunkers for awhile, worthy of some discussion here I would have thought.

What GSW thinks proves to be unerringly wide of the mark. In fact, the article is not “provocative”, it is a mishmash of most denier talking point of recent years, and avoiding a better answer – that our politicians lack the will to upset people already upset about getting shafted by the 1% in the GFC and consequent, and are now just looking the other way. But what but the shallowest shallows would one expect from the GWPF’s “market oracle” – seriously that’s his byline.

It is not worthy of further discussion. It was not even worth my time reading it. But I read it so others wouldn’t have to. Utter (and predictable waste of my time).

If Deltoid is to be infested with trolls, can they not at least be halfway decent?

Yawn, GSW. Yet another belligerent rant from someone who can’t tell the difference between television and the real world. Hint: just because the media aren’t in a frenzy about something doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

Don’t overlook that GSW once claimed Skeptical Science had stopped using peer reviewed reports and then threw a hissy fit when he learned that so many papera were being published in support of AGW they had to be condensed into a weekly post.

This man wouldn’t know what was actually going on outside of the denier blogs if it came up and slapped him in the face. Which it has. Multiple times.

Of course, with the impending El Nino and Ar5 I’m sure GSW will be proven right and everything will just go away…

Well, today I saw a cat and a dog furtively leaving a hotel together, and the pigeons were flying backwards in the sky.

Carbon tax, for sure.

On the other hand, the world now knows that sane people in Australia mean to do something about our share of polluting the planet, so maybe there will be some long-overdue action from others.

Well, as long as the alarmist climate change deniers don’t convince the lay public that it’s all a leftie conspiracy-fraud-scayum to make rich people poor, and to flood the world with that horrible innovative 21st century green technology…

“We” as in those of us presently here won’t see it. But “we” in the sense of wider humanity are taking the first steps to prevent an insufferable future.

Although I realise it must stick in your craw assisting those as yet unborn freeloading b*stards Betty, when there are plenty of right-wing crocodile tears to be cried over how those fascist greenies are preventing the third world owning Playstations.

“Much fun has been had in contrasting the Met Office’s forecasts of our weather during the past three months with what actually transpired. Its prediction on March 26 “slightly favoured drier than average conditions for April-May-June”, with April as the driest month. This forecast, the Met Office assured us, was based on “observations, several numerical models and expert judgment”. What happened, as we know, was that we have had more rain than at any time since records began in 1766, with the wettest April and June in 100 years.

What is timely to recall, however, is the admission made to MPs in March 2010 by Professor Julia Slingo, the Met Office’s chief scientist, that the “numerical models” used by the Met Office to make its short-term weather forecasts are exactly the same as those “we use for our climate prediction work”. ”

Would any sane man or woman reading those Met Office quotes be anything other than a climate warming septic? Particularly if you lived in the UK, had your heating on in June and had spent the last four years watching your BBQ rust while some clever clogs tries to tell you that the globe is warming!

Incidentally, it is now official, this is the wettest, coolest Apr/May/Jun for absolute yonks.

Are you sure about that Duff? Unfortunately you don’t provide us with any proof except a map which shows the opposite of what you claim. In fact, a quick change of the settings shows that the majority of the US had record high temperatures!

Ah, GSW troll, is not “GWPF”, purveyors of the finest gish gallop denialati non science propaganda, in the land of “Teflon Cameron”. I suspect under Cameron’s rule of mismanagement, a minimum of 25% of the current resident population, will be wanting to move Down Under in 2020, to a warmer climate when their North Sea Oil wells run dry! Or perhaps, move eastward to Germany, in search of jobs, in the land of plentiful non carbon based clean renewable energy?

Alas, GWPF leader ‘Benny the Troll Peanut’, was completely roasted alive and basted in his own propaganda sauce, by one Naomi Oreskes.

GWPF, is also well known, for publishing fake science from fake experts, such as classics educated Chris or Lord of Mocking Bull.

Sadly, not even worth ones time to read and debunk, previously debunked “BS”.

Surely, GSW, you can do better than an F minus, or is it Z minus? For proliferating pure unadulterated bull, from a mononeuron called Andrew McKillop. The irony being, the European Country with the highest green energy rating, is also, you guessed it, Europe’s most dynamic economy.

Watt a complete dolt and bird brained clown, is Andrew “Denialati” McKillop Although calling him a brainless bird, is basically an insult to the smarter feathered variety!! He is one, who is truly deserving of the double convicted serial liar “Andrew (Denial) Bolt Propaganda Award”!

As for “jrkridea” do I detect a hint of sarcasm?

For, it is a given that our bankrupt eastern colonial friends across the Tasman Sea, run a complete Greek Style economy of borrow for today and completely ignore tomorrow! Sadly, the twin islands, shrouded in the white smog of despair and denial, is in complete econometric Tim Curtin style core meltdown and implosion. It be, rather sooner than later. Sadly, the country now has only two exports of fresh food, graduates fleeing their large unpaid student loan debts and becoming a fresh batch of slaves, shipped off westward daily to the antipodes, to serve in the new robo mine pits of Down Under.

Say you went to the doctor for a checkup. He measures your blood pressure and says “uh oh”. He does a blood test. Again, he says “Uh oh. Betty, you have elevated blood pressure and cholesterol, and you’re a prime candidate for a heart attack. I don’t know precisely when it will happen, nor even if you’ll survive or not. But it’ll most likely happen sometime if you continue down this road, and the results are unlikely to be pleasant.”

Do you, Betula, stand there and just say “well doc that’s all a load of shite. Unless you can tell me exactly if and when I’m gonna have a heart attack, by exactly how much the above actions are going to change my cholesterol levels, exactly how many grams of arterial plaque or calcium deposits will be removed, and exactly how many years this will prolong my life, I’m not going to take any of your recommended actions.”

Is that really how you would approach it? Because it’s sure as hell how you seem to approach the climate debate. And the doc would just stand there as you sceptically stormed out of his office silently thinking “Oh great. Yet another pretentious wanker in my treatment room”.

Well, we’re not in the Stone Age, but Alan Jones still claims that global warming is a hoax, a relatively small number of protesters apparently claimed yesterday the “end of democracy” in Australia, and the article says “In Sydney, Ms Bishop said the government was trying to use climate change to hold onto power.” (Note however that it doesn’t provide an actual quote to that specific effect.)

I’m still wondering how Abbott can claim with a straight face that the carbon tax will roon the ‘conomee when the far larger, far more impactful GST … did not.

Also, I admit to not having payed a tremendous amount of attention to the whole ‘the GBN* Tax is coming! the sky is falling’ thing, not least because I’ve been voluntarily paying a Carbon Tax by forking-out for 100% wind power (for that nasty non-tariffy bit which my mighty 1kw solar system ain’t pushing to net, as it were) for years (actually, I just got a letter telling me my wind tariff just fell 44% Woohoo!).

Anyway, did the compensation packages start earlier than the tax itself, or something? Or did Craig Emerson just get asked a blatantly idiotic question (by the ABC) 41 seconds into this clip?

Because people would really know where they stood on July the bloody 2nd, wouldn’t they? Particularly people – always inclined to feel they’re being hard-done by in the best of circumstances – stirred up by one of the most hysterical and dishonest disinformation campaigns I’ve ever witnessed… (not least because it’s run by Deniers)…

How could you susgest such a thing. I have it on good authority from distinguished economists, nay, distiguished nobel laureates of the Chicago School that this is happening as I type.
The theory is clear on this point. (Don’t look behind the curtin–oops I mean curtain)

Doctor: “Uh oh. Mikem, you have elevated blood pressure and cholesterol, and you’re a prime candidate for a heart attack. I don’t know precisely when it will happen, nor even if you’ll survive or not. But it’ll most likely happen sometime if you continue down this road, and the results are unlikely to be pleasant”

Mikem: So your going to raise my rates?

Doctor: Yes, as a way to ensure you reduce your sodium intake, reducing your intake of fatty foods, and increase your exercise.

Mikem: Doc, how do you know when I’ve reached a manageable level of these things in relation to my health?

“Betty, what is it you imagine those who are attempting to constrain carbon emissions are attempting to achieve?”

I don’t think there is any expectation that it will achieve anything. My understanding is that it was price Gillard thought worth paying to get the greens on board at the last election.

Some reports I’ve seen have the cost at $3-4 per week for every man, woman and child in Australia. This will not drive you antipodeans back to the stone age, but neither will it “fix” the climate at some as yet unknown “optimum”. A small price for you all to pay for Gillard’s noble political gesture IMO.

Can anyone remember what the calculated net effect on Global temps would be as a result of the tax? don’t recall the exact figure, but think it was ~0.

“Some reports I’ve seen” – which you don’t link to, most likely because they’re from the usual suspects and therefore worthless.

“don’t recall the exact figure, but think it was ~0.” – which, as an intial step is still far better than +05% or whatever. More nations will follow because it’s the rational (look it up) thing to do given the emergency.

Lawson’s stance becomes more ridiculous by the day – as does his hairstyle.

I think the numbers are about right chek. There’s a clip below of Craig Emerson, Minister of Trade in the Gillard Government I think(?). He has it at $9.90 per household per week with (if you qualify) $10.10 cashback(?).

Worth a warning upfront, after a brief pause towards the end, Mr Emerson seems to experience some kind of mental episode.

That’s only a partial answer. What would 330 ppm do? Would it bring climate back to what it was at that time or keep it from changing from where it is? Which of course brings us full circle to my original question….

“When should we expect the climate in Australia to go back to what it was?”

Oh dear, you’re video link seems to be unavailable, GSW. Still I expect if a government minister does a song & dance act live on TV, he’s most likely indicating ridicule to you and yours.

Which, of course you must explain away as best you can, as “some kind of mental episode.” Because the alternative would be – as with most reasonable people – he doesn’t take you seriously. And who could?

Betty, we are attempting to constrain the growth of CO2 in order to maintain a global ecosystem that resembles the surprisingly benign one that has nurtured out civilization to date, and certainly to avoid signigicantly dangerous warming, roughly (and conveniently) held to be beyond 2C above the pre-industrial level, though judging by current experience it’s almost-certainly optimistic to assume that’s actually ‘safe’.

It’s almost-certainly also not achievable, thanks in no small part to the efforts of people like yourself.

Following on the arguments of people like Jim Hansen, some have concluded that ‘safe’, if it means anything at all, most likely means a level of 350ppm, still well above pre-industrial, and already well and truly exceeded, with a trajectory taking us further and further away all the time.

Most have concluded we’ll be very lucky indeed to pull up ‘safely’ at 450, and we’ll see what we may/must do about subsequent reductions if we manage to achieve that.

Silly people might manage to interpret all this as some sort of a demand for ‘cooling’.

Even sillier people argue – plenty of them inside this country itself – that we, being such a small nation, don’t make any difference anyway, so we should continue to gaily lead the most carbon-extravagant lifestyles on earth. If you are so ethically blind that you can’t see where that leaves us all – it’s called ‘the tragedy of the commons'; look it up! – I feel pity of you and contempt for your attitudes.

He has it at $9.90 per household per week with (if you qualify) $10.10 cashback(?).

Yep.

Which means that it’s dubious (at best) to claim that it will cost “…$3-4 per week for every man, woman and child in Australia”. A large majority of the “every man, woman and child in Australia” will come out slightly ahead – even more so if they switch to more carbon efficient products.

Last night’s episode of the must-see Australian ABC program Q and A was a vignette of the fundamental propensities underpinning the major Australian political paradigms.

Not long into the program GetUp! director Simon Sheikh collapsed, falling face-down onto the desk. The Conservative Coalition was represented by Sophie Mirabella, who recoiled in horror, whilst Labor’s Greg Combet dropped what he was saying and ran over to Sheikh. For Mirabella, someone else’s well being appear’s to be less important than her own comfort, whist Combet is prepared to step in as soon as circumstances require*.

Another astonishing instance was when the ‘Liberal’ Party’s spin doctor Grahame Morris showed his irrationality to full colours by almost bursting into tears raging against the very existence of climate change, and the scientists who study it. The segment starts around 21:20 into the program, here. It’s a triumph of blinkered, visceral ideology over unpalatable but empirically-based rationality.

In a similar vein, there were several business people who railed against the carbon price, apparently not understanding that living in a democracy and expecting governments to provide help to them, when desired, comes with the responsibilities and obligations to provide a similar right to optimal quality of life to other humans and to non-human species for centuries into the future.

This front-gate selfishness was underscored with the Business episode that followed after QandA, where Jonathan Jackson showed what a sensible business analysis would conclude, rather than what business lobbyists want to spruik simply because it attracts income from their funders.

A large majority of the “every man, woman and child in Australia” will come out slightly ahead – even more so if they switch to more carbon efficient products.

Which is, after all, the point! This is one tax you can avoid, and everyone’s better off if you do…

Seriously, people, there are so many easy steps to be taken here to minimise the impact of this Tax on one’s life that the wailing and gnashing of teeth would appear to be little more than a kind of national narcissitic hysteria. Whatever happened to the mythical lean, laconic, egalitarian nation of my youth?

Bernard J, I started to watch Q’n’A last night (as Combet is always good value, and I thought Sheik would be interesting), but it took exactly 3 seconds of la Mirabella’s annoying, grating voice and unmatched stupidity to make me turn it off (swearing).

Ah, Bernard J, gotta love the man’s first and last comment in your second reference “The propaganda war has begun in earnest………………………………so much smoke, people are waiting for the fire ( probably in the pants of Tony Abbottard”

David Irving, I know exactly what you mean! It’s astounding that Mirabella has responsibility for anything more significant than a paper clip. However, if you can bear it, the Mirabella performance last night was an exquisite example of lobbing petards into one’s own underpants. There must have been many Liberal [sic] spin doctors wincing whenever she opened her mouth.

On the other hand, given the audience reaction, it seems that there is a sizable chunk of the Australian public who will happily hoot like howler monkeys whenever someone says something that supports their inherent ideological baises. It seems to matter not a whit that Mirabella spouts complete rubbish, as long as it’s the brand of rubbish that they want to hear.

I’ve always wondered who was responsible for all the garbage tossed overboard from boats that I find at the beach. Now I know – folks like GSW.

Can anyone remember what the calculated net effect on Global ocean garbage would be as a result of my not throwing my trash overboard? don’t recall the exact figure, but think it was ~0. Well then, *toss*

Or, how soon the denialati fraternity forget the comments from Marius Kloppers, CEO of BHP Billington statement “He said Canberra needed to ”look beyond just coal” and towards other energy sources, or pay the price.”

Chris – that was rather my point. Is it surprising that a nation that has become progressively more self-indulgent – militantly self-indulgent, at that – should also have become progressively more obese? Hardly…

Mikem, “So pentaxZ links to an alt-health website for the “expert opinion”.

Jeezus. Give me a break…..”

Says a man living in (I suppose) USA, the country which gives obesity, hypertention, diabetes and stroke a name. Hillarious.

If you choose to believe ordinary common sense is the same as alternative, your’e in for a big surprise. In Sweden roughly 25% of the population have restricted their intake of carbs. And as it turns out, the above mentioned diseases has started to decrease. So by all means, keep believing in the low fat dogma, as you believe in the cAGW.

“My cardiologist says you’re wrong. The main risk factors for heart disease are smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.”

Your’e really up in the blue, What causes high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes and so on? What do you feed pigs if you want fatty meat? What do you americans fead your obese cats and dogs? What do americans eat mostly, fat, proteins or carbs? What did our gatherer/hunter ancestor mostly eat? What did the indians mostly eat before the white man came along? What do the Massai, the people with the best health in the world, eat? What do the Inuit (traditionally living) eat with perfect health? Common sense, anybody?

I don’t suppose Dr. Quackery Quack actually has any, like, y’know, evidence as opposed to earnest exhortations and figures pulled out of thin air. Because his past record on the science explaining AGW doesn’t inspire a lot – correction, any – confidence.

Tell me Pantiesize Z, where do you stand on ‘free energy’ and conspiracies to withhold it? After all, that’s but a micro-step away from the dastardly IPCC plot to tax you and your vital bodily fluids beyond endurance.

check, dear, about the supposed AGW, why try to explain something that doesn’t exist in the real world?

Well, about the metabolic syndrome, it’s simply as this, the sales of carb has dropped, the sale of butter and other full fat products has increased. Official numbers from the swedish food administration. The previosly mentioned desieases has decreast, shows the swedish health administration. Dry numbers. Of course backed up with science. As you can find at docs page: http://www.dietdoctor.com/science

Now, why don’t you explain why americans are the fattest and sickest people in the world. And why Swiss and French people are the leanest and helthiest in the western world, allthough eating big loads of animal fat?

And while all you science people are at it, how long do you estimate it would take for a species to alter its metabolic digestive system from digesting mainly animal foods to mainly carb based foods. 100 years? 1000? Perhaps 10000years? A million years? What’s your best guess?

Perhaps Pentax could also discuss average life expectancy now compared to then?

Sure, reality is much more complicated than that, but, really, that Swedish statistic was just as much pure bunk. Correlation/causality; all that.

And, God, perhaps it’s because I live with a Yoga teacher and all-round righteous lifestyle enthusiast, but diet/health discussions are booooooring.

However, they make a welcome distraction when your world-view is getting caned. Seriously caned.

Don’t they, Pentax?

C’mon, then, let’s talk aboutthe Weather. The Ice Melt. Greenland. The fact that your side of the argument is populated with people like this. C’mon, let’s hear your take on the second law, radiation propagating through a vacuum – all that!

And what you gonna do when the El Nino comes, clown? It will, you know… your pathetic cause is melting away faster than Greenland and US temperature records…

Bill, i knew you “science” people would dodge the question. Well, it doesn’t bother me that all americans, with the present rate, will be obese in a few decades. Not my problem.

Well, about the weather. When the weather is unusual warm, dudes like you blame it on AWG. But if a realist as much as beeps that perhaps, because there has been a couple of unusual cool and snowy winters, the climate is getting cooler, and that there has not been any warming for the last 15 years, all of you warmistas screams it’s WEATHER, not climate. Double standards in favour of AGW.

Glaciers are not static, allthough you warmistas tend to think so. They have always melted or grown. So what’s the big deal?

Sure they have. Over many thousands of years. And even over this time frame there is usually some element of statis/equilibrium. Right now most glaciers are in rapid retreat, and well beyond rates exclusive of some major forcing.One might as well say that species distributions expand and contract in response to biotic and abiotic constraints. Of course they do.But again these processes are generated over generally large temporal scales, not over the course of one of two decades. There are enormous biotic shifts current taking place: more generations per yea of insectsr, higher survival of many species in higher latitudes or higher elevation, and quite dramatic range shifts. Holland is now home to a wide range of species with few or no records here in the 1980s. Moreover, the ‘it hasn’t warmed meme’ has run its course: statistical significance has no bearing on ecological reality. Say the value of mean surface temperatures since 1995 is only signifciant at the 10% and not <5% level. What does that mean in the real world? Natural systems do not suddenly become static if we slip from <5% significance to 8%. Too many times I ahve read the silly brigade argue statistics without understanding what these mean to natural systems. Furthermore, many of the effects we are seeing now are based on changes that occurred before 1995. This is the result of temporal and spatial lags. The silly brigade expect temperature x to manifest itself on nature tomorrow on day y. How many times has this insidious logic got to be debunked before the deniers get sick of it and move onto some other distortion?

I “Lucy Skywalker” started this wiki for the climate skeptics community. I am also dedicating it to the late great John Daly, a tireless fighter for good science, courtesy, open research, and citizens’ science. I hope this initial vision statement can be owned by all, in time.

I was once an ardent “warmist” keen to “save the planet”. But I suddenly realized there was a wretched profusion of terminal flaws in the science, and I did a U-turn and wrote up my findings as a Skeptics’ Climate Science Primer. I am pretty well acquainted with most facets of the science, and the story of corruption. I have come to love the subject, and to take seriously several controversial areas that are frontiers even for climate skeptics. But I am not university-trained, and there are many areas whose technical details and terms floor me. So I recognize the importance of clear simple language with good pictures and diagrams, to make it harder for bad science to be foisted on us.

…one of Watts’ most fervent Dunningly-Krugered lay commenters, who sees conspiracy and fraud in every corridor of science, and who is one of the more obdurate sufferers of cognitive scotoma that one could ever encounter.

Sadly, she honestly believes the garbage fed to her by the Denialati, and obviously sees nothing wrong with promoting multiple mutually-contradictory stances, as long as each stance contradicts the reason-based physics of global warming. A case in point is the inclusion on the vision statement page of that non-sequitur from the cartoonist-without-a-sense-of-humour-or-any-scientific-understanding.

If she want to leave that site as a legacy for her grandchildren, I hope that she’s prepared to accept that they’ll be embarrassed and humiliated that their grandmother was a screaming fruitcake who contributed to delaying action that would have helped to mitigate the serious climatic alterations that humans a inflicting on the planet.

I suspect that others from WWWT will pile on to participate, like drakes on a duck…

‘Liberal’ Party’s spin doctor Grahame Morris showed his irrationality to full colours by almost bursting into tears raging against the very existence of climate change, and the scientists who study it….

Morris is another disgrace to the human race right from the get go with his allusion to ‘a log called Al Gore’. His notion that the ‘gurus’ and by extension we are still unsure about AGW is either naked ignorance or pure dissembling and I was gratified to hear a few boos at that point. Morris probably swallows Bolt’s effluent without further thought.

zoot, of course he does. Statins is the worlds most sold “medicine”. Big Pharmas golden cow.Someone mentioned “Correlation/causality”. The cholesterol theory is just that, a theory. Never proven. The cholesterol hypothesis is just as notorious in the medicine science as the hockey schtick is in the climate science. Ancel Keys and Michael Mann, same same but different.

And ends with “We show that many land-terminating glaciers underwent a more rapid retreat in the 1930s than in the 2000s, whereas marine-terminating glaciers retreated more rapidly during the recent warming.”

So, now, Greenland is the entire planet now? What has this article got to do with the large scale retreat of glaciers world wide? All you are doing here is what the other deniers do: distort the findings of a peer-reviewed study o bolster you own narrow agenda….. Pentaxzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz… sorry, I dozed off there with you incoherent rambling.

And the ability to predict weather – a highly stochastic process – has nothing to do with predicting climate, which is highly deterministic. But why say this to you? You clearly haven’t been near a science class in ages.